McCIV-01 Prince McShuffle

[armstrong]

For some reason I thought I had more pictures than I did. Only three informative ones, unfortunately...

First, here's St. Pete's at the perfect storm for whipping... note that since the forest chop came in, it got some hammers towards the library instantly and so was able to be whipped immediately instead of waiting a turn. It's ridiculous how much stuff St. Pete's actually got built with the big whip and two chops (Lighthouse, Library, and Barracks all came in within 7 turns!)

Next, here's a look at the locations Qin and Cyrus's cities, respectively. Unfortunately, I didn't get a shot of Cyrus's actual city in the last turn - it had two archers and a settler in it.

Qin: (the city is 1s of the rice)

Cyrus: (the city is SW of the jungle-hill, across the river.)

 

[armstrong]

Whoops, I uploaded the wrong save. The one up now is correct.

Nice turns!
I didn't check the save for your moves, but the whipping and scientists sounds good. Note that we don't need a library everywhere, Moscow and St. Pete should be enough for a while.
So next we found the northern B, and after that, if still available, the southern fish site? Or should we forget about that one and take it by force?

Since Cyrus has two archers and a settler built already, we can probably let him do the work settling the fish site...

How is science, is it worth building an academy somewhere with that GS we'll get in a while?
If we could get CoL and Confucianism isn't founded yet, that would be nice. Or hold on to the GS for a while to wait for an expensive tech to be available for him, maybe civil service? Usually I'd build an academy, but if we have two so-so science cities instead of one really good one, probably that's not so useful now.

Exactly why I was thinking of using the GS for a technology: an academy in Moscow will give us 7 beakers, and one in St. Pete's 5 I think, so it's really not that great.

[QOUTE]And you're right, if we could get a religion monopoly on the continent, that'd be huge for income, relations, and intelligence.
In order of preference, I'd go for CoL, Theology, Philosophy. Gotta take a closer look at our tech tree position.[/QUOTE]

I'm not sure if we have time to get Code of Laws. If we rushed it instead of Construction, we might have a shot.

From the "Learning to Walk" SG, bradleyfeanor posted the following list of tech priorities for Great Scientists. I've edited it to include only techs reasonably close to our age:

Printing Press
Education
Optics
Philosophy
Chemistry
Compass
Paper
Astronomy
Alphabet
Calendar
Iron Working
Metal Casting
Engineering
Machinery
Gunpowder

So, as long as we have Code of Laws & Meditation, the scientist will research Philosphy. That means that, if we really wanted a religion, and were willing to delay war (or just use axemen against Cyrus's creative cities, without cats), we could research Meditation -> Priesthood -> Code of Laws and use a scientist to get Philosphy. Or, we could go Construction -> (Currency->Meditation or Meditation->Priesthood) -> Code of Laws, and then found Philosphy. I think we'd be able to get it in time to found Taoism in either case. The scientist won't, unfortunately, ever research Civil Service. He will get us Alphabet right now, though, which, while it's a bit of a waste of a scientist, will be a bigger tech boost than an academy in the short term.

 

[Thrar]

So do I understand that list right that the GS will give Printing Press, if that one's unavailable he gives Edu, if that one's unavailable, too, ... and so on?

If I remember that right, he doesn't ever change what he gives unless you research that tech yourself, right? So we'd first have to make Philo available, then research Alphabet. Sounds like a long shot to me.
I'll have to check the tech tree, but I think it'll be faster to go through the upper branch straight to Philosophy. Alphabet, one of those culture related techs I think, then we could research it.
Maybe we can even delay the scientist to be born as soon as Philosophy is available? I think that might be our best option.
So, switch from construction to Alphabet, then to whatever else is needed for Philo, and time the scientist right. I don't see the need for war with Cyrus soon, we have to found the other northern city, build an army, and I think attacking archers with up to 40% city defense with city raider axemen is ok, as long as we bring enough of them. We can't afford a crippling strike anyway, only take maybe two northern cities I think.

 

[armstrong]

So do I understand that list right that the GS will give Printing Press, if that one's unavailable he gives Edu, if that one's unavailable, too, ... and so on?

Yep, if it's at the top of the list he'll favor that tech.

If I remember that right, he doesn't ever change what he gives unless you research that tech yourself, right? So we'd first have to make Philo available, then research Alphabet. Sounds like a long shot to me.

Actually, that's not the case - he will change his mind if new technologies become available. He'll give Alphabet (presumably) to us now, but if we research Code of Laws he'll switch up to Philosphy. I just tested this out in the World Builder (it looks so bizarre to have a Great Scientist standing next to a starting settler & scout... )

I don't think it's useful to delay the Scientist, though, even if we're going to have him standing around for a turnset or two - the scientist gives three beakers, which is just as good as working the coast and better in the short-term than working a non-river cottage. Plus, with our distributed research, we're going to want a lot of academies, so a head start on Scientist #2 isn't a bad idea.

I don't see the need for war with Cyrus soon, we have to found the other northern city, build an army, and I think attacking archers with up to 40% city defense with city raider axemen is ok, as long as we bring enough of them. We can't afford a crippling strike anyway, only take maybe two northern cities I think.

Yeah, Construction might have been a little premature. There aren't too many beakers invested in to it right now.

I'll have to check the tech tree, but I think it'll be faster to go through the upper branch straight to Philosophy. Alphabet, one of those culture related techs I think, then we could research it.

Wow, I didn't even know there was a path up in that part of the tree! Looking at the tree, Drama leads to Philosphy also, as an alternative to Code of Laws. Drama will give us cheap theatres for +2 happiness/city at the cost of 10% of our commerce. This might be the fastest solution to our happiness woes. Running 20% culture will net us 4 happiness along with 2 from Philosphy, more than doubling the size of our cities and easily paying for itself. We'd still need to grab Mysticism -> Meditation, but with Alphabet we could trade for those. Plus, Drama is a pretty good trading tech. Even though Drama is less flexible and a bit pricier in terms of upkeep than Hereditary rule, this requires less production, less techs, and gives more useful intermediate techs. I'm really liking this path.

One final thing, before I forget: there's still 3 tiles of fog at the far northern tip of our continent that might have seafood resources. We really should take a peek up there before we settle that city - I'd hate to miss out on a couple of clams...

 

[McLMan]

Got it will play soon

@ armstrong & Thrar ... THANK YOU for your terrific discussion. It's exactly what I was hoping for in this SG. I've been reading along, and have wanted to participate, but don't have the "civ-ability" to add anything.

So this turnset I'll switch research to from Construction to Alphabet to take the "upper path" to Philosophy. Settle the Upper B town. Build up our military. And whip to control happiness & increase production.

I need some help with whipping before I start. I've studied the "perfect storm" screenshot but I don't get it. I can't even figure out how many hammers you get from whipping. Is it 30 per citizen? How does the timing with chops work?

I just thought of something! Maybe it's nothing but...
An Academy is worth more on epic speed. More turns = more beakers. Just something we should consider since I get the impression that you usually play normal speed.

 

[armstrong]

@ armstrong & Thrar ... THANK YOU for your terrific discussion. It's exactly what I was hoping for in this SG. I've been reading along, and have wanted to participate, but don't have the "civ-ability" to add anything.

Please, don't you or anyone feel intimidated from speaking up at all... I'm a bit of a windbag at times I know that I've learned a ton of things from this SG, too, and have made some not so good calls and such (heck, I was the one saying we shouldn't get a religion, what, two turnsets ago? ) The more discussion, the better! I know I personally make lots of instinctual moves that I've never really thought too deeply about (for instance, normally I focus very heavily on settling early, and I was feeling a bit worried when we didn't have a 3rd city by 1800, but it seems like settling fewer of these strong food sites and building them up has kept us ahead in the demographics, and importantly, kept our tech rate very strong. Plus, it's made things a lot easier on our workers so we can have fewer/they have time to chop our forests/etc.)

So this turnset I'll switch research to from Construction to Alphabet to take the "upper path" to Philosophy. Settle the Upper B town. Build up our military. And whip to control happiness & increase production.

That sounds good to me. I'm not sure if we want to get a settler started for city #5 or not. It's probably better to get it sooner rather than later, but our military definitely needs some work. I'm not even sure which city would be good to build it in - maybe Novgorod since it has the most food? St. Pete's is busy with Scientists, and Moscow is our only real hammer city. Whatever you (and the rest of the group) want is fine by me.

I need some help with whipping before I start. I've studied the "perfect storm" screenshot but I don't get it. I can't even figure out how many hammers you get from whipping. Is it 30 per citizen? How does the timing with chops work?

Basically, you get 45 hammers from each population whip on Epic (30 on normal.) There was a bug where it would round up to the nearest multiple of 30 for some reason on Epic, but I think it's been quashed in the patch.

As for timing, there are a few key things:

1) If you whip (or rush buy in general) when there are 0 hammers on the actual item being built, it will cost more population per hammer, so you always want to have at least 1 hammer already in. Normally, this means waiting a turn, but in the "perfect storm" a forest chop came in that round, putting hammers on the library, so I was able to whip immediately.

2) Every time you whip, you gain 1 unhappiness for 15 rounds. However, if you whip before this is up, not only do you get a second unhappiness, but the 15 rounds is extended. So, for instance, if I whip when I still have 3 turns of unhappiness, it will give me 18 unhappiness on the second unhappy. You don't want to do this unless it's an emergency or you're far under the happiness cap. It will tell you this if you hover the mouse over the "whip" button. You can use this to see how many turns are left before unhappiness wears off - if it says 18, you know you have 3 turns until you can whip again. Ideally, you want to time it so you have at least one hammer on whatever you plan on whipping. You can also just check each city every turn to see if they still hate "your cruel oppression."

3) Ideally, you want to whip unhappy people. This is why the "perfect storm" was so nice - the city grew a second unhappy person just that turn and the whip gave one unhappy person, so by sacrificing 3 there was no loss of useful tiles. Plus, since you can only whip half the population, it needed to be size 6 to fit the library in.

4) You want to make sure to maximize the population whipped. In general, if you can only whip for 1 person, it's better to either finish building/chop whatever is in the queue or put something else on, wait a turn, and whip once you have gotten a hammer into it. For instance, if Novgorod was ready to be whipped but had too many hammers on an Axeman so that it would only take one pop, you could switch to a Granary, wait a turn, and whip that, as it's something the city needs anyway. Ideally, you'll see this coming a turn or two ahead of time, so you can whip as soon as they forget about the last time.

If you follow those rules, you'll pretty much get all you can out of Slavery.

I just thought of something! Maybe it's nothing but...

An Academy is worth more on epic speed. More turns = more beakers. Just something we should consider since I get the impression that you usually play normal speed.

You're right, I normally play on normal... I've played a few Epic games (actually, my best Monarch win was a cultural victory with Tokugawa on Epic ), but none since the patch. This is actually one of the reasons I was worried about getting Construction early, since on normal you have relatively fewer turns to build an army and move it into place before they get longbowmen- having 30 turns to fight is a lot better than 20!

As for the academy, this is actually a good point. I think they scale the tech bonus for free technologies from GP relative to the time speed (1.5), but I'm not sure - in the last patch, at least, I believe that the Golden Ages were not scaled properly. Does anyone know? This actually could be annoying. In any case, I think Philosophy will be strong for both the happiness, the ability to (hopefully) monopolize our religion on the continent, and the fact that it's one of the largest techs you can research entirely with a GP - if nothing else, it's some huge trade fodder.

I've noticed a few weird things also - it seems like forest chops take a turn longer than they're supposed to on Epic? (3 turns on normal should be 4.5, but they seem to take 5? Should that be rounded down to 4 instead?)

 

[Thrar]

I read in another thread a few days ago that GAs on marathon speed take 16 turns, so they do scale, although not to the full extent (3x), there. I have no idea how long they'd take on epic.
For the GS we're going to get, we'll have the choices academy, super specialist, or tech discovery (Philosophy). Since Philo is quite an expensive tech and would also give us Taoism if we get there in time, I'd go for that.
We save many turns on research, get a religion which puts us in a very good position on our continent, and on top of that we can use pacifism to easily generate another scientist.
An academy at this point would be what I'd do with the second one, or maybe with the first if Taoism is taken by then. We should determine which city will be our biggest science city in the long run, and build the academy there. St. Peter could also be a GP farm, while Moscow has nice production, too...so maybe the science city will be one of our currently minor cities?
What it needs is one food bonus, and lots of grasslands to put cottages on. The northern city has some desert, that's its drawback, so maybe down south at Novgorod? They have two food bonuses, a marble tile which also gets a nice amount of gold, and lots of grassland. I think it has potential. That way Moscow could become a production city (with two bonus production resources!), and St. Peter with its food bonuses gets some farms for specialists.
It's a bit early to decide on that, but for now I'd say:
Novgorod -> Oxford, Wall Street
St. Peter -> National Epic, if necessary Globe Theatre, NO FORGE or anything that takes away health!
Moscow -> Heroic Epic, West Point

I don't know how our military situation is right now, but as long as we can expand and grow peacefully, I think we shouldn't spend to much in that department. With 5 or 6 cities, an axeman each should be sufficient now. Later, when we trade for archery, we can substitute the inner ones with archers and send them forward, while training more for war. Right now, no need to slow our growth or development with too much military.

 

[McLMan]

Thanks for the information on whipping. I thought I "got it" at the beginning of this turnset. I even used it with great success in a solo game before playing my turns. Only whipped once during this turnset, and screwed it up. I think I have it now.

Pre-turn:
A nice fledgling empire starting here. Still a little thin with our military. Looks like we're set to remedy that soon.
I switch research to Alphabet (take the high road ) Due in 19.

Turn 1) 700 BC
Re-direct our Settler to the B2 site.

Turn 2) 685 BC
Yuri Jr. checking out Cyrus' lands.

IT - Moscow: Axe -> Axe

Turn 3) 670 BC
Founded Rostov on the B2 site (Granary)

IT - Novgorod: Rax -> Axe

Turn 4) 655 BC
Xtream Jr. mines a hill
Willy begins a quarry on the marble
Yuri Jr. finds impending doom S of Persepolis

Turn 5) 640 BC - zzzzz

IT - Moscow: Axe -> Axe

Turn 6) 625 BC
New Axeman heads South

Turn 7) 610 BC - zzzzzz

Turn 8) 595 BC
Whip the Axeman in Novgorod. Somehow I messed it up. I ended up with a because I only used one citizen to finish him. This is what it looked like after whipping. I thought I had it, but apparently I need more work with it.

IT - Novgorod: Axe -> Axe

Turn 9) 580 BC
Papa Serf is under way to Rostov to farm the wheat.

IT - Moscow: Axe -> Axe

Turn 10) 565 BC
Axemen heading South

Post Turn:
I managed to settle Rostov in the right spot, and we more than doubled our military during these turns. Here is a comparison of before and after:

In the demographics screen, our military went from 8th to 6th.

I messed up with the whip in Novgorod, and we have to deal with extra unhappiness for a while.

Moscow is cranking out an axeman every 4 turns. I sent the 1st axe to guard Rostov, and am sending the rest South. Either way we go (Qin or Cyrus) I think we're going to attack from the South. (I assumed)

armstrong
McLMan - just played
Paulsy - up
Thrar - on deck
Woobi - MIA???
Xtreme Rockstar - waiting patiently

*****The Save*****

 

[armstrong]

I read in another thread a few days ago that GAs on marathon speed take 16 turns, so they do scale, although not to the full extent (3x), there.

Right, that was my impression on epic - it was longer but not as long as you'd expect. Something to keep in mind, I guess.

The northern city has some desert, that's its drawback, so maybe down south at Novgorod? They have two food bonuses, a marble tile which also gets a nice amount of gold, and lots of grassland. I think it has potential. That way Moscow could become a production city (with two bonus production resources!), and St. Peter with its food bonuses gets some farms for specialists.

Hmm, I hadn't even really thought about national wonders at all yet! I think it might be better to switch Novgorod and St. Peter around. My reasoning is that while Novgorod gets 15 cottages to Pete's 11, Pete has 5-6 coastal tiles (worth a couple of cottages) and coastal trade routes (worth a couple more cottages eventually) so they should be close to equivalent. Novgorod, on the other hand, has lots of grassland to irrigate for more specialists while St. Peter has mostly plains that won't really help much until Biology. This would make Novgorod a stronger GP city. Really, though, I'd like too see if Taoism gets founded in either of those cities - if so, we should make that one a commerce city to take full advantage of Wall Street. Note that city #4 can be a coastal, 10 cottage city if it steals 3 tiles from Moscow, so Wall Street wouldn't really be wasted there, either, if it founds the Way. I'd still think Oxford is best in St. Peter's or Novgorod in that case, though.

I agree with Moscow as HE city - it's our best one early game when the HE matters most, and late game it will be strong too once workshops become decent (post Chemistry or so.) Hopefully we can find a nice Ironworks city in the jungle down south - I love carving a nice 20 grassland city out and just filling it with workshops

Here's one thing I've never thought of: I've never moved the Palace before, but does it count as a National Wonder or a regular building for rush buying/whipping purposes? If Moscow is going to be our HE city, I'd like to move the Palace to our Oxford city for both the 8 commerce and the more central location (eventually) to the southwest. It's still a ways off, though...

Oh, for reference, here's a link to the "Learning to Walk" SG - just reading through that pretty much made me play at about half a difficulty level higher.

Learning to Walk

Also, here's another helpful link to the Hall of Fame Gauntlet #3 - it was fastest cultural victory. There's a lot of good discussion there once you get beyond the first couple of pages, particularly walkerjks's comments on city midways down page 4 - it's been really helpful for me in being able to quickly evaluate commerce city sites without having to do too much counting. There's also a lot of other goodies in there, too. I remember I was flabbergasted when I first read it (and I'm still just amazed at the winning times ), but I learned a lot from it.

HOF Beta Gauntlet 3

If you haven't read those threads yet, I can guarantee you'll find something to improve your game, no matter what skill level you are.

 

[armstrong]

Well, look at this! I'm here making a post and when I submit it some turns came in. I haven't had a chance to take a look at the save (and won't have time tonight.)

Yuri Jr. finds impending doom S of Persepolis

Heh, I thought he was a goner at the end of my turns! I can't believe he lasted even that long. You know what's really weird? We haven't seen any barbarian archers yet, and we're running out of room for them to come from.

Whip the Axeman in Novgorod. Somehow I messed it up. I ended up with a because I only used one citizen to finish him. This is what it looked like after whipping. I thought I had it, but apparently I need more work with it.

Just make sure, when you hover the mouse over the whip button, it will whip the amount of people you want. The extra unhappiness isn't terrible (just a loss of 2 food/round, but we have plenty of food to go around ) The reason is that since you can only whip once every 15 turns, you want to maximize what you get out of it - but it's not the end of the world, it's one less population to grow before the next whip.

Moscow is cranking out an axeman every 4 turns. I sent the 1st axe to guard Rostov, and am sending the rest South. Either way we go (Qin or Cyrus) I think we're going to attack from the South. (I assumed)

with the military. I assume they're going south, as well - I think Novgorod is the logical staging ground (and city we need to defend the most.) I think Thrar is of the opinion that we should focus our efforts now on the next settler, rather than more military now that we have enough to defend our cities? I'm fine with that - what do you all think? And what do you think our next city site is? If we're going to grab two more cities before war, we should make a move for that fish city next I think.

 

[Paulsy]

Nice turns McLMan things are starting better with plenty of axemen appearing. Im away for the next few days so would someone else be able to play my turns?

 

[Thrar]

So then, I guess I'm up, right? Got it.

You're right on what you're saying about the national wonders and city specializations, armstrong, let's wait for the holy city to see where that one goes, and GP farm will be in Novgorod then.
I think it might in fact be difficult getting a great prophet, once we have the religion. With a temple we can only use 1 priest, and we don't have anything else that would help out on that.
Maybe I'm missing something here (actually I hope so), but I don't see us building the shrine soon unless we're lucky.

 

[armstrong]

You're right on what you're saying about the national wonders and city specializations, armstrong, let's wait for the holy city to see where that one goes, and GP farm will be in Novgorod then.

In the event Novgorod founds Taoism, I'd like to see the GP farm in St. Pete's (or maybe Rostov? I'd need to take a look at the save.) Novgorod is just a great city with it's food and land - it can be either commerce, specialists, or late game production. Then again, as a GP city it could run merchants and we'd really get our money's worth (so to speak ) out of Wall Street.

I think it might in fact be difficult getting a great prophet, once we have the religion. With a temple we can only use 1 priest, and we don't have anything else that would help out on that.
Maybe I'm missing something here (actually I hope so), but I don't see us building the shrine soon unless we're lucky.

Yeah, I agree... though we should get one eventually... one option is to stop St. Pete's from running scientists after we get our first GP, and then run a priest (with Pacifism once we have a temple)... at Epic speed, that would be 300 GPP, so it'd take 50 turns. Ugh. But it might be the best way to guarantee one... or we can just run two scientists and a priest and "pray" for a prophet.

Edit An idea just popped into my head:

Actually, we could run a priest in whatever city founds Taoism (or gets the missionary, though we might want to send that over to Huayna) while running two scientists in a different city. If we watch the timing closely we can stop the scientists to make sure our 2nd GP is a Prophet... this way, we'd still get 20 or so turns of 2-3 specialists in our GP city. We'd delay our 2nd GP a bit, but our 3rd one would come in pretty soon afterwards.

Hey, another idea! Once we found Taoism we should know which city will be our GP city, so we can run the priest there and build/whip our National Epic in that city to speed things up, while another city runs scientists (making sure to stop just before we get our second GP.) We shouldn't lose too many turns of GP production that way - with marble, each population is worth 60 hammers on Epic for national wonders, so NE is not a terrible .

Another edit: Perhaps whomever is playing when (if?) Taoism comes in should take a pause, so we can discuss how we want to specialize our cities... With all of our cities being high food + few hills, I don't think it's very cut and dry at all, and it's something we should put some "group-think" into.

 

[Thrar]

(0) some switching around: We now have 5 axers, but neither Novgorod nor Moscow have a granary. I set them both to build one.
Also, since Novgorod can't grow (it's already unhappy), I switch the high food tiles for production, even running a food deficit for a while. Once I can, I'll whip the granary for 2 pop.
At St. Peter, which also can't grow, switch the pigs for one of the cottages. Now why aren't they on the river (and preferably plains)?

One thing about promotions: Only promote units when you can use it! Those two city raider I axes we have running around here don't do any good now. Maybe later we'll find out that we can better use them with something else! And don't forget promoting heals 50% of damage. Never promote unless you can use it!
I'm not sure what all those units are doing...there are so many axemen running around.

(1) after 1 turn of building, whip the granary in Novgorod for 2 pop. Happy now, at pop 2, working the mine and soon-to-be quarry for no growth. No more whips here for at least 12, preferably 27 turns.
I don't understand what that rockstar or a worker is doing in the forest...send him up to St. Peter to later cottage one of those *river* plains. Send one of the axes down to scout out our potential fish site, and switch around a city raider garrison with a combat I axe.

(2) quiet turn. We could use another worker I think, so I switch Moscow around to make one. Granary continues after that. Just notice we also don't have a lighthouse there...

(3) St. Peter: Axeman->axeman. Nothing else to do there. Not promoting the newly built one.

(4) nothing.

(5) same.

(6) axe in Novgorod finished. Starting on settler, for the southern fish. Qin is getting up more cities around us. We should settle our last two cities quickly! Move Willy to chop one of the grassland forests for the settler.

(7) River cottage at St. Peter is finally finished. Better take 1/1/3 instead of 2/0/1 I'd say, and we can't grow further anyway!

(8) Alphabet comes in. Drama due in 17. Merit Ptah (GS) is born. Send him to sleep until we know what Drama is. Worker in Moscow finished, goes off to make another river plains cottage there, to work instead of the plains forest. More *river* cottages being built at St. Peter. Southern fish site still free.
We're the only ones with Alphabet, but all our other techs are known to everyone, so no trading opportunities. All they're willing to give is archery, anyway.

(9) one of our scouting axes defeats a barb axe.

(10) start pasture on the sheep. Everything else just moving along.


Notes for the next player:
Whip that granary in Rostov as soon as you can. I'm not sure what to build there next, if in doubt, axers, apparently you guys like them.
The forest chop at Novgorod will be done next turn. Don't start another one, it won't be done in time to speed up the settler. After the chop, we'll have 3 forests there, so later we can chop 1 more without health loss.
When the cottage at Moscow is done, I suggest working that one instead of the forest plains.
Several cities are on "no growth". Better leave that on, so they don't grow accidentally. This has nothing to do with the governor, they also don't grow if you manage them yourself, then.
After the settler, Novgorod should soon be ready to grow 1 more. Monitor carefully.
The axe on the hill south was scouting until it got hit. The other one is just checking out the fish spot.

Things to discuss:
I suggest the settler goes down south, to grab the fish if we still can. The next settler then can go to the last location we had picked.
Next thing in Novgorod maybe a library? Then Rostov could make a settler once they're at happiness limit (with 1 whip unhappiness from the granary).
Moscow has a lighthouse queued up to make full use of the clam when we need food.
I alternated research between 90% (-2) and 2x 80% (+1). No big deal I guess, but it might get us Drama a turn or 2 faster than just stockpiling money. Things might change once we get more commerce online though.

 

[McLMan]

Nice turns Thrar.

One thing about promotions: Only promote units when you can use it! Those two city raider I axes we have running around here don't do any good now. Maybe later we'll find out that we can better use them with something else! And don't forget promoting heals 50% of damage. Never promote unless you can use it!

That's my fault. Never thought of that. I see your point, great idea.

I'm not sure what all those units are doing...there are so many axemen running around.

Moscow is cranking out an axeman every 4 turns. I sent the 1st axe to guard Rostov, and am sending the rest South. Either way we go (Qin or Cyrus) I think we're going to attack from the South. (I assumed)

 

[Xtream_Rockstar]

so woobi is next if he comes out of hideing

 

[McLMan]

Woobi hasn't been active in the thread for 9 days now, I think we should consider him a skip until we hear from him. When he does check back in, we should see where we are and then decide whether to swap or wait for his turn to come around again. So the current roster is:

armstrong - on deck
McLMan
Paulsy
Thrar - Just Played
Woobi - MIA???
Xtreme Rockstar - UP!

 

[armstrong]

Good work Thrar I like the call on the worker, on Epic speed building improvements is like pulling teeth.

At St. Peter, which also can't grow, switch the pigs for one of the cottages. Now why aren't they on the river (and preferably plains)?

Heh, I didn't even see that St. Pete had those two river tiles!

Just notice we also don't have a lighthouse there...

There was really no need for a lighthouse there until it can grow to size 6... we probably lost ~30-40 food building workers/settlers there, compared to the 90 hammers it would have taken to build it. Now that it will be time to grow soon, though, we definitely want one!

I really should have posted a picture of this in my post-turn review - instead I just mentioned it in the text... we really need to move a unit (there's a spare axemen in Rostov) to see if there's any fish resources up here:

The fact that it overlaps so heavily with Rostov and Moscow is actually a good thing, in my book - it can help work cottages in Rostov, and can steal the horses from Moscow and the corn from Rostov when they're in growth/production mode respectively. Even if we don't have seafood, it has 7 coast and a plains forest tile to itself, so it can pay for itself, especially once we get ocean trade routes, but that'd make it very low priority in my book (i.e., after courthouses.)

River cottage at St. Peter is finally finished. Better take 1/1/3 instead of 2/0/1 I'd say, and we can't grow further anyway!

Do you think we continue whipping St. Petersburg for now, or keep it at size 4 working the river cottage? It could whip out our 6th settler perhaps?

I take a look at the trading screen - only Huayna has Mysticism? And he starts with it! That's unreal - no wonder there's no religions on our continent! I seriously doubt Christianity or Islam will be founded here. We might need to research Mysticism -> Meditation on our own before we can use our Scientist, though - Huayna won't break his obelisk monopoly lightly!

Several cities are on "no growth". Better leave that on, so they don't grow accidentally. This has nothing to do with the governor, they also don't grow if you manage them yourself, then.

Yep, just make sure we turn it off when we're ready to grow when theatres come in! Actually, though, that should be coming in on my next turnset. Consider that a note to self

The axe on the hill south was scouting until it got hit. The other one is just checking out the fish spot.

It looks like he got pretty roughed up - did he run into another axe, or just a lucky archer?

Things to discuss:
I suggest the settler goes down south, to grab the fish if we still can. The next settler then can go to the last location we had picked.

I agree with this.

Next thing in Novgorod maybe a library? Then Rostov could make a settler once they're at happiness limit (with 1 whip unhappiness from the granary). Moscow has a lighthouse queued up to make full use of the clam when we need food.

Both sound like fine infrastructure, though a 6th settler would be nice too. I think whipping it in St. Pete's might be a good idea (though if you do whip, do it early! Once we get Drama, we'll need whips for some theatres.)

As for Woobi, he hasn't posted in the forums at all since April 26th - I hope everything's fine...

 

[Xtream_Rockstar]

okay so im picken up

 

[Xtream_Rockstar]

okay if u read the title we are like at the bottom of most powerful civs (look at screenie) but heres how it went on my turn

turn1: nothing
turn2: Beaker goes down to 80%
turn3: axeman gets PWNED Moses is born (and judesim asnt even been founded )
turn5: named a worker who wasnt named POOHEAd started to get him connecting the capital with Rostov by land
turn6: started on libary where settler was built
turn10: Light house built in moscow started on Great light house in moscow
Turn12: Yarsavl is founded sry no pic
turn13 list of most powerful civs and we are at bottom now i want to invade somebody

14 Drama is compleated started on mysticim
17 mysticim compleated started on buddism
Last turn budism founded

[/IMG]

yah since our ecodomy SUCKS!!!!! lets go invade and take out our problems on some little country

On to next person